Cheryl

Actually I have met a couple of older bearers of this name in the South who pronounce the first syllable the same as the word "chair."

I am a Cheryl, in fact I share both first and last names with the female basketball player which a couple of you mentioned on here already. I was born in 1980 in Richmond, Va. Something I am a little surprised to see has not been pointed out by anyone else yet is how in some parts of the South (including Richmond, Va) people pronounce the name like SURE-UL with most of the emphasis placed on the SHH - ERR - part at the beginning (think like the same way people say shiver, only in this case it has an "r" where the "v" is). Pronounced this way it changes everything about the word really.